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Marketing is something that began to fascinate me soon after Steve and I put our first sites online. Back then it seemed that it was almost a case of build it and they will buy. There was no thought of what a marketer needed to do to increase his or her chances of making a sale. There was no thought of what type of person actually bought the products. There was no thought of what motivated them to buy and there was no thought of when they actually made the purchases.

But it wasn't long before some people began to realize that they could increase their sales if they put a little effort into learning all they could about their customers. That wasn't easy back then and even today you have to spend time outside the adult industry to get all the information that might help you increase your sales.

Sadly the marketing information that might help us is either not collected by anyone here in adult or it's jealously guarded by those who do. Without that information the wannabe guru's in this industry still talk about our customers and clients in terms of traffic - a faceless mass that flows here and there and sometimes sheds one or two people who chose to buy what we're selling.

It tends to give us the wrong impression when we think in terms of traffic. We think in terms of that faceless mass when we should really be thinking in terms of individuals who have various wants and needs, desires, lusts and hopes and all those factors influence very individual that goes to make up what we learn to think of as just 'traffic'.

So how do we find the information we need to know to effectively market to those individuals when no one in this industry has the information, or is prepared to release the information, that we need to improve the focus of our marketing?

The answer is simple, sure we need to stay in touch with what is going on in the adult industry and so it's important to stay on the boards and it's important to read the regular offerings from people in this industry who know what they're talking about. But we also need to look elsewhere too. Just because you work in the adult area of online marketing don't limit yourself to only reading what's available in the adult industry.

There are many valuable lessons being published every single day on a variety of mainstream websites and you should be reading widely to keep up with all that valuable information. Even though the article may not be discussing something that is obviously related to what you sell in adult that doesn't mean that you're not going to learn a valuable lesson that you can adapt to what you're doing over here.

You might not think that those who are involved in something like outdoor advertising would have anything to teach us but, then again, you could be wrong. Outdoor advertising is increasing its market-share at a surprising rate and it wouldn't be doing that if it wasn't effective. There may be some similarities between outdoor advertising and adult related advertising online that you may not have thought about.

Think of a billboard out on a highway - how long does the message on that board have to impact on someone passing in a vehicle? Think about it for a moment and you will see that a billboard might only have a second or two to get its message across before the person who is reading it has passed by.

That's often the same amount of time that we have to get our message across to a surfer who is zooming down a web page looking for the enter link or all the freebies we give them. If the outdoor advertising crew can get their message across in such a short period of time then what can we learn from them?

A recent article in Clikz suggested that looked at the outdoor advertising industry suggested that they keep the message simple, they give their message time to sink in and they maintain their message but change the delivery.

The first point is obvious but you really do have to be on your game to produce an effective ad that is simple. The second point is aimed at the time you leave a message in place. Just because an ad on your site isn't working two days after you put it up don't rush to change it. Give it time to have an impact, give it time to sink in and be actively noticed by the regular visitors to your site.

And the third point is one that is important to those of us who have sites that get return visitors. Maintaining the message but changing the delivery in our case means sticking with the same sponsor but changing the ads.

How often should we change those ads? Well the billboard people suggest changing their ads around every 60 days but whether that would work for you and your websites is something that you would have to experiment with. Sometimes some ads are effective long after that 60 day period so you really do need to experiment.

So there are just a few ideas from one form of marketing that you might consider to be so removed from our industry as to be totally useless to us ... but it obviously isn't. And there are plenty of other marketing thoughts, ideas, reports and suggestions out that that will help you make money right here in adult.

They're all waiting for you so don't limit yourself to only what you see and read in adult - this is only part of the marketing story.